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Creating Your Own Opportunity: Anyone Can Do It. Dr Peter Kelly School of Science, Aalto University. Entrepreneurship = creating new, for profit ventures. Pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources in hand. Entrepreneurship is a skill we all should master. What do we teach?.
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Creating Your Own Opportunity: Anyone Can Do It Dr Peter Kelly School of Science, Aalto University
Entrepreneurship = creating new, for profit ventures
Pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources in hand
Entrepreneurship is a skill we all should master
What do we teach? I D E A P L A N € $ £ ¥ E XIT
Traditional Roadmap • Search for new high potential opportunity • Light bulb goes on • Write business plan • Raise money • Hire great team • Build product/offering • Orchestrate big launch • Achieve steady or hockey stick growth • Trade sale or IPO • Retire on beach
Does Traditional Roadmap Work? • 98% of all new US businesses do not raise funding from angels or venture capitalists • 70% of new businesses start with less than $20.000 in founding capital • 1 in 6 of INC 500 fastest growing companies started on less than $1.000 (including Dell Computer 1984)
Does Traditional Roadmap Work? • Only 6 of 1.000 business plans get venture funding • Of those 60% go bankrupt • Fewer than 2% of ventures reach an IPO • Yet what do we teach? And how?
Search and Select Strategy • Market already exists in some form • Undertake detailed analysis to identify opportunities • Assess market potential on basis of segmentation and past demand • Assemble resources to exploit the opportunity
How Could You Predict? • Budget airlines (Northwest 1971) • Microlending (Grameen Bank 1976) • Online book sales (Amazon 1995) • Internet search (Google 1998) • Social networking (Facebook 2004)
Opportunities Can Be Made • Incomplete information • Market that defies definition • Consumers are not aware of their needs or wants • Confusing and conflicting signals abound
What is your motivation or passion?
I want to start a business • I want to be CEO • This is a “hot” sector • Investors like this space • I want to be rich • I am unemployed
What Are My Means? • Who I am? • Traits, abilities and attributes of entrepreneur/team • What I know? • Education, experience and expertise • Who I know? • Social networks
I want to invest my time doing this because ...
Affordable Loss:Risk Little, Fail Cheap • Risking little implies thinking creatively about how to bring cost of discovery down while … • Determining your walkaway cost in terms of time and money • Time seems to be more expendable than money • Depends on which type of money (earned income versus found money) • Returns are not solely monetary in nature
Co-Creator Mentality • What do you bring to the table? • What are you prepared to lose? • Do you have an open mind as to what is being created? • And with whom? • Why not? As opposed to Why?
Co-Creation: Securing Partners • Stakeholders bring new means to table • Stakeholders invest what they can afford to lose • Open minded approach to the opportunity • Buy-in as opposed to selling • Look for partners with a “win-win” (reciprocation) • Who deliver on their promises • Who you like dealing with
What are my means? • How much can I afford to lose? • Who can I co-create with? • SURPRISE!